Sunday, Snow Day, Sick Day

This sassy dude became a Sunbeam this year! 

It was a welcome change. He has been over the nursery scene for quite a while, so he was anxious to move on up. I have received many compliments about how good both my boys have been in primary over the last few weeks. Does my heart proud!

We've been making weekly visits to my couch-ridden mother to keep her company after her recent foot surgery. While my sister and I cooked her dinner, she entertained our children. Fair trade if you ask me!

Eli bought himself a Lego set with some of his Christmas money. I was so proud of him! He ambitiously followed the instructions and figured out how to build it all by himself. After one time putting it together, he disassembled the whole thing and rebuilt it from memory. This kid has a stroke of genius in him!

While at Grandma's house, the boys spelled out a love note to Grandpa.

We have entered the homework battle. People. This is an annoying battle, and I'm only 6 months in. Occasionally homework is put off until Thursday night, and that's when Jeff steps in to get down to business with much more patience for the assignments and the attitude than I have left.

We have had some issues with lack of respect in our house. The boys actively refuse to do anything Jeff and I ask them to do. They are sassy most of the time. They are whiney. We are in a funk. A funk that happens every winter, but a funk that I refuse to accept!

Last Sunday, the boys were a nightmare getting ready for church and were throwing major attitude all through Sacrament Meeting. We usually watch a movie with the boys on Sunday evening, so we threatened to take away the movie several times which was only met with sass and snarls.

I waited until we got home from church to announce that not only had they lost their Sunday movie, they lost all screen time for the whole week in an attempt to reboot the respect and happiness in our house.

Instead of a movie night, we had a game night which was super fun. We played war.

We arm wrestled, we taught the boys how to play Connect 4, and we ended with Pictionary. It was a much needed evening of family bonding that got our screen free week off to a great start.

The boys sometimes step in to feed Lincoln if they see him helplessly sitting in his chair without food for too long.

Eli didn't have school on Monday. We were invited to a snow party by one of our friends! I told the boys about it before I realized Jeff didn't work that day. I decided we would stay home with Jeff instead of going to the party, but the boys woke up Monday morning at 7:00, got their snow clothes on immediately, and were eager to say so long to Jeff to make it to their snow party.

Between five moms, we rounded up a lot of kids for the party!

The excitement of the day wore Carson right out. He fell asleep almost instantly on the way home. I can't remember the last time he fell asleep in the car!

It ended up working great that we had somewhere to go because Jeff was busy at home fixing our garbage disposal and dishwasher. Many a Youtube video later, he figured out all of our problems. He's the fix-it-up king.

Lincoln does this new thing where he wipes his hands in his hair every time he eats. One evening he got a little piece of pizza stuck on his head. It managed to stay there for a solid 3 minutes, leaving the boys giggling with delight every second it remained.

There we were. Four days into our week without screen time. Things were going better than planned. The boys were being much nicer to each other and much nicer to me and Jeff. They were sweet, kind, and more respectful. And then disaster struck.

We got sick.

I was caught between trying to stick to my disciplining and trying to keep a house full of sickos at bay which was mildly torturous. The boys weaseled their way onto my computer to Google pictures of characters so they could build those characters out of Legos. That lasted the majority of our first screen-free sick day morning.

Then they got creative and made a snowman out of their train tracks.

Somehow we survived the first sick day sans screens. I had high hopes our sickness would quickly pass and we'd diligently make it through the end of our screen free week. Lincoln had other plans.

On the night leading into sick day number 2, Lincoln was awake from 11PM-3AM. Then he was up about every hour after that. I was teetering on the edge of full-blown sickness, but the lack of sleep took everything out of me, kicking me into survival mode on Friday.

We made it to 9:30 when Lincoln got really crabby and I was sure he'd go down for a nice, long nap after being up all night. I put Lincoln down. He went right down. Then I put a movie on for the boys so I could sneak away for a nap.

Ten minutes into the movie, Lincoln started crying. After many attempts to get him to succumb to sleep, he refused. I broke our screen free week so I could get a nap and then I didn't even get one because Lincoln didn't go down for a nap until after lunch! Grrr!

Luckily we survived our sick, sleepless, screen-free week and are all well and happy once again!